Commentary

Singaporean qualifications don’t mean a thing without experience

Singapore is obsessed with qualifications. Everyone is geared towards getting the best and most number of diplomas and degrees and MBA’s. I hate to tell you all but they mean absolutely nothing without experience.

Commentary

Singaporean qualifications don’t mean a thing without experience

Commentary

5 challenges that HR professionals face today

In light of the rapidly changing business landscape in Singapore today, the challenges within the field of human resources are endless. The role of human resources professionals is constantly evolving and expanding, with new challenges surfacing beyond operational HR issues.

Commentary

Just when you thought you've forged a great team

Here in the Lion City, I speak to many Lions and Lionesses, and some Cougars and Pumas, who run their own businesses or are part of large organizations. We talk about many things under the sun, ideas, current affairs, vagaries of people and establishments, and, invariably at some point, the topic of “good help is so hard to find nowadays” crops up.

Commentary

Worries over Singapore's wage gap intensify

Professor Lim Chong Yah's call to greatly reduce Singapore's rich/poor wage gap as a matter of national urgency, has aroused much interest - he is not only is one of the long standing prominent economists in Singapore, but also happens to be related to Mr Lee Kuan Yew by marriage thus making it natural for one to wonder whether the issue was discussed between them before being brought out in public.

Commentary

Insights and Lessons from Leadership in Asia Part 2: Effective Leadership in Asia: Summaries and Implications

Following on from Part 1, what leaders do that make them successful is to respond to the country context so that their behaviors are consistent with the values and beliefs of the prevailing culture. Leaders also need to respond to their company culture which creates expectations and norms of how they should act to help their company deliver business goals.

Commentary

Leading with emotional intelligence

The New Realities

Commentary

Why you should engage and retain your best employees even in difficult times

The fallout from the financial crisis has been loss of face, wealth, homes, jobs, and/or businesses for many people. What disturbs me is that the financial crisis is not the root problem, the attitudes that caused it are.

Commentary

Effective marketing in mobile apps

Consumers spend a large proportion of their time on their mobile devices. A study by Flurry analytics showed that in Q1 2012 daily smartphone app consumption rose to 77 minutes per day.

Commentary

Be a leader with a vision to inspire your team

OVER the past 30 years, there has been increasing data to suggest that leadership has a lot more to do with inspiration and vision, rather than straightforward technical competence.

Commentary

Effective salesmen should know WHY people make purchases

PEOPLE purchase products and services for both logical and psychological reasons. Some products and services because they make life easier for us by saving us time, effort and money.

Commentary

Rooting out your productivity problems

With a declining economy coupled with rising rents and wages, businesses in Singapore are more interested than ever in increasing productivity.

Commentary

5 reasons why you should be a guest blogger

Guest Blogging simply means writing and publishing a blog post on someone else’s website or blog. The opportunity to guest blog may be by an invitation from the host blogger or a request from the interested guest blogger.

Commentary

The pros and cons of social media

How does one distinguish between a fad and a social or business transformation? And in which category should we put Facebook, Twitter and all the other web-based networks that come under the heading of social media?

Commentary

Making your people more productive

In the struggle to maximise business growth, enterprises in Singapore and all over the world face the testing challenge of lowering operational costs whilst meeting ever-increasing customer expectations.

Commentary

Vision 2030: A golden opportunity for Singapore’s brand

“As a universal language, sport can be a powerful medium for social and economic change: it can be utilized to bridge cultural gaps, resolve conflict and educate people in ways that very few activities can” (World Economic Forum, 2012: https://members.weforum.org/pdf/GAC/issue_descriptions/RoleofSportsinSociety.pdf).

Commentary

How flexible working also helps the environment

Anyone who breathes the air of Singapore at rush hour knows that traditional working practices are not good for the environment. The car emissions from Singapore’s commuters are bad for air pollution, bad for health, and bad for the economy.

Commentary

What 'scholar' really means in Singapore

The word "scholar" has a special meaning in Singapore, different from the usual definition "person devoted to the pursuit of knowledge" - here is means "someone who received a full scholarship from a government department or major corporation to study for a degree, in return for a contractual obligation (also known as bond) to work for the sponsor for X years".

Commentary